Intu to trial new technologies across its 14 shopping centres

Intu’s start-up incubation programme is bringing a host of new technologies to its shopping centres. The tech, designed to benefit consumers and retailers, includes a virtual personal shopper and a service that delivers shoppers’ bags straight to their cars.

Now in its second year, Intu Accelerate will invite seven start-up companies with innovative ideas to pilot their technologies across its 14 shopping centres, in a move to find new ways of complementing bricks-and-mortar with digital tech.

The start-ups will work with Intu, which owns Intu Trafford Centre and Intu Lakeside, over a ten-week period, starting this month.

They include Greendeck, which uses AI to help fashion brands and retailers automatically classify products into categories and attributes; Yosh.Ai, a virtual assistant that provides a personal shopping service; and CarTap, which provides secure access to vehicles to deliver shoppers’ bags straight to their cars.

“Retail is one of the UK’s most exciting and dynamic industries and it’s transforming at pace. Together with these creative and innovative businesses, we’re developing answers to many of the questions facing our customers and retailers today,” commented David Fischel, chief executive of Intu.

“Intu Accelerate is giving these seven new businesses the opportunity to show how we can do things differently through live trials that will also demonstrate the potential of their idea to shape the future of retail and create the perfect shopping experience.”